iNSIDE SCOOP: Next?

After the slam-bang finish at Auto Club Speedway last weekend, what does Martinsville hold for us?

I’m sure it will be amazing, for if there ever was a track that generates excitement, it’s Martinsville.

The last two laps at Auto Club were everything you’d expect from a shootout-style finish. Kyle Larson started ninth, was up to fourth by the end of the first lap and very nearly got to first before the checkered.

Kyle Busch wasn’t the leader  on the final restart, and he won the race. Jeff Gordon got snookered again and finished 13th. Tony Stewart wound up with another smoke-and-mirrors top-five (but they all count the same!). Kurt Busch drove the wheels off his car without actually running the tires off it, which at ACS was a big deal.

If any track can top that for excitement, it’s Martinsville.

It doesn’t look like all that when you drive in, and it’s small in stature. But it sure is big in excitement. I can stand in the backstretch garages, peeking out from under the roof, and be 20 feet from the cars with a good angle into Turn 2. One swivel of the head and I’m watching them on the brakes into Turn 3.

The bumping, jostling, rooting and gouging are in full display, and you can tell who has it and who doesn’t.

Everything is close at Martinsville. The track is a little more than a half-mile around. That’s two of the quarter-mile tracks that you likely sweated around in high school. Cars with nearly 900 horsepower, depending upon which report you read, are racing on it at better than 125 miles per hour down the short straights.

You are close enough to see the brake rotors glow in full sunlight, and you can smell them before the race is five laps old. There’s hardly any point during the race where the cars aren’t in a big wad around the track, and the sweet smells of burnt rubber and gasoline are pungent and omnipresent.

Can you tell I like the place? 

A couple of memorable finishes for me are the pinball-wizard deal when Clint Bowyer punted the 48 and 24 out of the way to clear the way for Ryan Newman to win the race, and the 48-24 battle that had the two friends scowling at each other in the post-race. Jeff Gordon did everything but spin Jimmie Johnson to win that race, and it wasn’t like he didn’t try to do that.

Gordon pounded the ever-living mess out of the car he co-owns and it wasn’t good enough.

Can’t get any better than that, and if you’re looking to keep the excitement at a fever pitch, there’s no better place to go than Martinsville.

And don’t forget to buy a hot dog while you’re there!